


Self-Organizing Principles in Pack Communities

by Guede



Series: Sustainable Management [13]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Hale Family, Alphahood Doesn't Come With A Manual, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Angst and Humor, Bondage, Cock Warming, Dom/sub Undertones, F/M, Good Parent Melissa, Human Alpha Stiles Stilinski, Incest, M/M, Multi, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Pack Bonding, Pack Dynamics, Polyamory, Stiles Stilinski is a Good Friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-30
Updated: 2016-04-30
Packaged: 2018-06-05 08:53:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6698155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lacrosse away game, that motel where all the suicides happen, Stiles is totally getting into trouble and dragging his pack along with him.</p><p>Except that’s not quite what happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Self-Organizing Principles in Pack Communities

Stiles totally accepts that as alpha, he’s going to be the primary decision-maker. Not that that automatically means dictator-for-life status, or even that he’s going to be able to make decisions without a healthy peanut gallery commentating along, because packs are group entities. Emphasis on the _group_ , and the whole idea that many are better than one not just because of numerical superiority, but also things like collective intelligence and shared experiences and plain old Darwinian selection (where you gotta have diversity in the first place to avoid a massacre). But somebody’s got to make the final call, and in the pack, that’s the alpha. Which is him.

“It’s just that if I’m actually asking for your input, and you just keep bouncing the ball back to me, all, oh, alpha, whatever you think is best, that’s not the system working,” Stiles says, scribbling out the defensive play he’d just drawn. “That’s just you being a difficult jerk.”

“Now, Stiles, don’t you think that’s a little harsh?” Peter says.

Stiles looks up from his notebook and is greeted by an ingratiating smile, slightly strained, from his stalling beta. Who, to be fair, is kind of struggling, what with having his wrists cuffed to the headboard, and his legs chained wide so that Stiles doesn’t have to hold them open to keep his cock in the man. Still, it’s mostly a play when Peter catches his eye, pants a little, head tilted so the sweat running off his temples ends up pooling in the hollows under his jawline, and then shivers around Stiles’ cock, extra quiver in his splayed thighs.

“I let you come once. Actually, technically, I let you come twice, because I totally caught that selfie handjob you did while you blew me,” Stiles says, shaking his pen at Peter. Then he hitches up on his knees, working out a cramp, and rolls his eyes as Peter lets out a not-entirely-fake moan. “So no. Peter. We are working out this stupid play first, and _then_ maybe Derek can suck you off.”

“ _Alpha_ ,” Peter groans, just short of a begging whine. Then he lets his head thump back onto the pillow. He grimaces as assorted chains tug at him, and his ass kind of tightens around Stiles, which to be honest, is a much more persuasive argument, but fortunately for Stiles, Peter is too busy being annoyed to notice. “Why am I on the spot for this? Derek’s the one who stakes out all your practice sessions, shouldn’t he be more familiar with your team?”

Derek, who’s been in a contented post-coital lump for the past ten minutes, wakes up enough to grunt in disapproval and jab his knee at Peter’s thigh. Then he slumps out again, his hair tickling Stiles’ hip as it goes down. “Not watching game when I do that,” he mutters.

“Besides, you’re the one who’s always bragging about how your mad strategy skills led the high school team to back-to-back championships,” Stiles points out.

Peter rolls his eyes. “That was basketball. Entirely different sport. Also, I personally vetted and—and—and tr—Stiles. Stiles, that’s very—if you want the benefit of my _mind_ , perhaps you shouldn’t—shouldn’t—”

Stiles stops flicking the non-writing end of his pen against Peter’s cock. He lets relief creep onto Peter’s face, and then he takes Peter’s cock in hand and starts prodding at its head with the pen. Dabbling in the precome tracks running down the side, then, as Peter hisses and whimpers, drags the end up to probe around the slit. When Stiles finally lifts the pen, Peter’s shudder sends dribbles of sweat off his face and pecs and abs, and the light catches some of the drops and makes Peter look like he’s shaking off honey, and for a second Stiles thinks about just tossing the pen and notebook aside and bending over and licking it up.

For a second. He’s still a teenager, after all. But he’s a teenager who’s on a mission here, and when it comes to missions, he will not be distracted. “Peter, we need this stupid win, okay? I owe Lydia and Jackson for helping get me out of school when we were fighting, and also, this is Scott’s last-but-one chance to impress the college scouts, and—”

“Why do you have a coach if you end up doing all the plays anyway?” Derek mumbles.

“Because I don’t officially do them, I just stick these plays into his binder when he’s watching _Independence Day_ for the umpteenth time, because Adam Smith isn’t actually a great source for lacrosse tactics.” Then Stiles shakes himself—Peter whimpers a little, ass squeezing, and Stiles has to take a deep breath—and smushes Derek’s head into the bed so the man will stop bitching. He drops his notebook on top of Derek, scribbles down another play, and then holds it up for Peter to see. “Let’s just get this last one done, okay? What do you think?”

Peter’s starting to glaze over a little, though he comes out of it before Stiles has to get really drastic and pull out and hide in the bathroom (Peter’s brand of masochism does not extend to being ignored). He blinks hard, lets out a long-suffering sigh, and then makes himself look at the notebook with a visible effort. 

“Boyd’s out for this match, isn’t he?” Peter says, frowning.

Stiles makes a face. “Yeah, I know, which is why Jackson and Scott are freaking out so much I’m, ah, _enhancing_ Finstock’s repertoire.”

“Then why do you have him anchoring the midfield?” Peter asks.

“I…what?” Then Stiles flips the notebook around and squints at the slightly-smeared ink. He tilts his head and then comprehension dawns. “What, no, that’s supposed to be Booth, it’s just Derek’s sweat got on there.”

“Oh.” Peter thinks that over. “Well, I think it’d work, but what happens when you break for counter? Jackson and Scott are terrible at watching for holes opening up behind them, you know that.”

“Yes, I do, and that’s why we have this!” Stiles says, flipping through the notebook. Then he holds up the new page.

Peter looks at it, tilts his head, and then nods. “All right, that seems reasonable. Now can we _please_ get back to—”

“Are you sure you’re not just saying that so you get to come?” Stiles says, narrowing his eyes.

It goes through Peter’s head to be sarcastic. His brows and his mouth do that little twitch towards the snark zone, and then he lets his head loll backwards as he sighs. And flexes his hips down, and maybe he _was_ paying attention to what that was doing to Stiles. 

Or maybe it’s just a lucky guess, but anyway, the notebook slips through Stiles’ fingers and halfway through him scrambling to keep hold of it, Peter purrs and curves up his throat and flexes again. And Peter’s definitely figured it out now, and Stiles loses his grip on the notebook and pen completely. Both of them slither away across the sheets as Peter’s squirming and rocking make the mattress shift, and then on top of that, Derek decides now’s a good time to push up on his elbows, all sex hair and sleepy, simmering-hunger eyes, and block Stiles from retrieving them as he glances over Peter.

“So, was I gonna suck him off now?” Derek says. Casually flicking his tongue over his lip.

Stiles digs his nails in where he’s gripping Peter’s hips so he doesn’t accidentally flop on the man and just demolish his alpha authority while he’s at it. Which makes Peter whine and crook his throat more urgently, so eager to apologize that he’s doubling down on being distracting, and Stiles just sighs and reaches over to hook one hand around the back of Derek’s neck.

“You two are _so_ unhelpful,” Stiles mutters, pushing Derek’s head down. “Seriously, sometimes I wonder what’s the point of having sarcastic sneaky jackasses for betas if I never get to use that for evil?”

Derek doesn’t answer because he has Peter’s cock stuffed down his throat. Peter doesn’t answer because he’s busy rattling the chains and squeezing himself around Stiles in the very best of ways. Which okay, Stiles admits, right before his higher brain functions shut down. That’s a pretty good argument in their favor.

* * *

What is not a good argument is Derek sulking because they didn’t take his car. “We didn’t take Peter’s either,” Stiles points out.

“That’s because you said no car sex till after the game and you think that if Peter and me and you all go in his car, we’re gonna end up doing that,” Derek says. Slouching in shotgun in Stiles’ jeep, claw going tip-tap at the window like he’s been doing for the past hour and a half. Not that Derek isn’t a grown adult with a college degree and a career and all the other reasons why he should be more mature than bratty toddler moves.

“I didn’t say that. Well, okay, I said the part about you guys being constitutionally incapable of not going for PDA if we’re stuck in a small, enclosed space for more than thirty minutes, and I have the field statistics to back that up,” Stiles says. He flicks on his turn signal and zips by the stupid station wagon that’s been keeping them at a crawl, and then catches up till he sees the top of the school van again. “But the no car sex thing was Jackson’s idea.”

“It was not,” Jackson says from the backseat, looking up from his phone. “I said, don’t do whatever the hell you did last time to pull that hamstring. I do not, have not, and will never need the freaky details of what you people do.”

Stiles looks in the rearview mirror, but with his usual impeccable timing (when a slapdown is brewing), Scott gets in the way. He makes puppy eyes at Stiles, and when Stiles doesn’t immediately cave, sighs and points out the back window at Peter’s car. Which contains Lydia and Melissa, since Stiles’ dad can’t make this game and Chris and Allison aren’t quite okay with Hale carpooling yet, and yeah, Scott, Stiles remembers that he promised Lydia he’d give Jackson a little quality pack time after skipping out for all the campus tours.

“Anyway,” Stiles says. “We weren’t all going to fit in one, and Lydia likes Peter’s car better, and she’s a lot meaner than Scott about shutting down other people’s make-out sessions. Besides, there is _no way_ we were going to do anything even remotely sketchy in front of Melissa. She has all the tranqs, Derek, you just don’t.”

“I still don’t see why that means we couldn’t take my car,” Derek mutters, shifting his knees. “It has more leg room. Like a lot more.”

“Well, we had to fit our gear, too, since the van can’t take all of it,” Scott says. He pauses to finish up whatever he’s doing on his phone, shuts that and then leans forward, ignoring the annoyed face Jackson makes at having Scott’s elbow intruding into his privacy bubble. “And we have to bring it back too, when it’s all dirty and covered in grass and stuff.”

Derek draws a breath to respond and then doesn’t. His brows scrunch as he seriously considers filthy, used lacrosse gear in his precious Camaro, while Stiles grins and twists his hand back to high-five Scott. “Yeah, ol’ Scott’s right,” he says. “Otherwise we could’ve taken Jackson’s car.”

“Are you kidding me?” Jackson says. “Over these roads?”

As grumpy as he is, Derek isn’t going to let that one fly. He raises one hand and pops all the claws on it, and then smirks a little when a whine immediately comes from Jackson’s corner.

“I mean, it’s great that one of us doesn’t mind getting their interior trashed,” Jackson corrects. Grudgingly, trying to cover for his embarrassingly quick submission by pulling in his phone to coke-bottle nearsighted range. “But seriously, these roads are shit. I can feel my tendons knotting up as we speak.”

“Well, honestly, it’s not like it would’ve been a lot better if the school bus hadn’t broken down and we’d been able to take that,” Scott reminds him. “At least Stiles can drive around the potho—”

Of course they hit one right then. Because Stiles is actually a very considerate driver, his long track record of cars trashed in the name of the Service notwithstanding (most of those were off-road extenuating circumstances anyway), but even he isn’t going to swerve into the car next to them to avoid a hole. Which isn’t so much a hole as an entrance into the abyss beneath the earth, at least judging by the quick look he got before they went over it.

“Most of them,” Scott says, fighting down his teeth chatter, brave and loyal and the bestest best friend ever.

Jackson snorts and takes the hand he used to brace himself off the roof, and tucks himself closer around his phone, as if that’s going to help his cramps. “Whatever. Just where the hell is this damn hotel that Finstock booked? We’re out in the middle of nowhere, I haven’t seen even a Motel 8 on the signs for miles. Aren’t there rules about the minimum quality of places you have to book for school outings?”

“Actually—” Stiles starts, and all of their phones buzz.

Stiles doesn’t answer his, because he’s busy avoiding another pothole and anyway, Derek’s reaching over and digging it out for him. Scott and Jackson both frown and check theirs, and then Jackson almost pops off the jeep’s roof in outrage.

“Are you kidding me,” he says, grabbing at the side of his head. “Are you _kidding_ me. No. Just—no. I am not—what the hell is this man on, and—to hell with it, I’m calling my father.”

“I’m sure it’s an accident,” Scott says. He scruffs at his hair, then gets a call from somebody—oh, it’s the Allison ringtone, which means Scott’s attention is immediately halved (and Stiles is being generous, to reciprocate for his buddy backing him up just now). “Though I don’t know, if your dad actually _can_ do something…”

Derek hands Stiles’ phone over. “So Finstock says the van’s having engine problems, and he’s making you guys all pull over into this motel that’s at the next exit instead of using the place he booked.”

Stiles doesn’t look at the phone. “Okay, well, I think we were all ready for a break anyway, right?”

* * *

“—can’t do anything?” Jackson is spitting into his phone. “So you have a stupid client meeting. Well, _I’m_ about to be forced to stay the night in a disgusting fleabag junkie hangout that looks like it came straight from some slasher film! Do you want to wake up to the news telling you I’ve been found in a dumpster?”

“It hurts to agree with him, but he’s got a point,” Derek says.

The rest of the lacrosse team and friends and chaperones are still arriving, but the people who have shown up are all huddled together in the front courtyard, with pretty much identical looks of disbelief and dismay on their faces. And the place…basically fits Jackson’s description; he might be an asshole but he’s reasonably observant.

Even if he doesn’t have Stiles’ exhaustive experience with dodgy situations, all of which are telling Stiles that this isn’t just a terrible idea, it’s a potentially dangerous one. “Yeah, no,” Stiles mutters, absently slinging his arm around Derek’s waist. “This place is off. We’re not doing this. Where’s Finstock?”

“I think he’s still getting the keys at the front desk,” Scott says, but he’s looking in the wrong direction. Then his shoulders slump in relief, just before he raises one arm and starts frantically waving. “Oh, great, there’s Mom and Peter and Lydia. Mom! Mom, over here!”

Melissa’s pretty tuned-in too, even if, as support staff, she and Scott haven’t been in nearly as many creepy places as Stiles. She immediately zeroes in on Stiles, even cutting in front of an unusually nervous-looking Peter. “Stiles? Stiles, I know that look.”

“Yeah, it’s the get out of here and call Dad look,” Stiles says. “Also, maybe we should check whether Finstock’s the kind of normal where he literally nullifies weirdness, because I do _not_ see how he’s not reading the vibes here.”

“Mom, he said he was going to book our rooms and he’s already gone to the lobby,” Scott says.

Melissa looks at the motel, raises her brows, and then grabs Scott and pushes him into Stiles. “You stay here, I’ll deal with that. And when I say stay here, I mean it. No heroics.”

“I know, I know, texting Dad,” Stiles says, though Melissa’s already marching across the courtyard. He actually does have half a text already typed, it’s just he’s kind of unsure how to properly frame it. “Once I figure out how to say it so he doesn’t freak out and call in the army.”

“Why would he do that? It can’t be that bad.” Lydia tucks her arm through Jackson’s, her intensely curious look contradicting her breezy tone. “It’s just a motel, isn’t it?”

Then she pauses. She’d been turning to look at another car pulling up, but her eyes cross the motel along the way and then get stuck there. They go a little unfocused and she sucks in her breath, her hand tightening on Jackson’s arm. Give him credit, Jackson notices and glances over, and then grimaces and promptly abandons his bitching at his father.

“Lydia,” he says, his voice suddenly unnaturally calm. He slowly moves his hand in front of her face, then snaps his fingers till she starts and her eyes focus again. “Lydia. Hey. It’s me. We’re in the middle of the creepy boondocks because Finstock broke the van.”

“I know, I’m not amnesiac,” she snaps, but she’s leaning a little on him. Then she composes herself and looks at Stiles. “We are _not_ staying here.”

“He wants us to stay here?” Chris Argent says, coming up. Oddly, he says that to Peter, who’s been keeping an ear on everything but who has forgone his usual scent-greeting with Stiles to frown at the motel. “Is he joking?”

Peter looks over at him, then hesitates. Stiles shifts himself and Derek over to them and Peter smiles absently, but actually, he’s looking at a couple loitering teammates who seem very interested in their discussion. Which, good point, last thing they need is a bunch of idiots daring each other to do stuff before they get out of here.

“Scott, can you pull captain rank or whatever and herd the non-need-to-know folk?” Stiles mutters, poking his friend. “Fill you in later, okay?”

“Yeah, sure, on it,” Scott says, ambling over.

Allison joins him, though not without a lot of sharp looks at her father, and Chris looks both relieved and dismayed when his daughter leaves. He and Peter share another look, and then he digs out his phone. “Stiles, did you tell your father about this yet?” he mutters.

“I was in the middle of it, but I’m not really sure what to say except creepy motel, not staying here,” Stiles says. “It’s…we’re in another county now, so it’s out of our jurisdiction. I mean, he’ll come anyway if I make him think he has to, but….do I?”

“I thought your family had this place shut down?” Peter hisses at Chris. “I remember very clearly being told that Mireille came over in person.”

Chris sucks in his breath and hunches his shoulders. He’s very annoyed, but also, for a second he looks…kind of like a dog when it’s suspecting it might get kicked. Which throws Peter, who blinks a few times and drops whatever else he’d been about to say. Maybe just out of sheer inexperience with that reaction from Chris—though when Stiles thinks about it, he’s seen Chris look like that before, when his dad was upset with him. But it’s definitely been a while since that happened.

“She did,” Chris finally says in a curt tone. He pokes at his phone a little bit, and then gives up on that with an irritated twist of his mouth. “Damn it, I can’t check from…but yeah, after what happened with Alexander, we…I know the owners sold out. Somebody else must have bought it and reopened it.”

“If they did, they would’ve been required to certify the exorcism,” Peter says under his breath. “It’s part of the paperwork for getting a new operating permit. Though for that matter, I don’t see how they could’ve gotten any respectable contractor in to work on the place without conducting pre-certification cleansings.”

“I don’t know what was certified, but trust me, it didn’t work,” Lydia breaks in. She’s very tense and brittle-sounding, and she’s gripping Jackson’s arm so hard that he’s obviously in pain, though he isn’t trying to shake her off.

“Okay, what happened to the who when how?” Then Stiles shakes his head. “Wait, scratch that. So, first of all, we’re not staying here. Second…where are we staying? Because Melissa’s coming back and I don’t know what she said to Finstock, but she’s grinning and it would suck if she talked him out of it and we got nothing.”

Derek’s already looking at his phone. “Reception’s really bad, I’m not getting enough bars for Internet.”

“Really, technology should be an aid, not a crutch,” Peter sniffs. And then he steps out and lets out a long, ululating howl. He waits a few seconds, while everybody stares at him, and then smirks as an answering howl comes floating over the hills. “Just ask the local pack. It’s why we put up with all those damned conferences, after all.”

“I…was pretty sure that those conferences were for stuff like game management and equal distribution of scarce resources, but whatever, if this is some Stone Age werewolf version of Yelp, I’ll take it,” Stiles says. He pries himself away from Derek and slings his arm over Peter’s shoulders, then tilts his head so that yeah, Peter can get his victory scenting. “So tell me that we at least have a Red Roof Inn, or something of equal quality. I don’t need the luxury toiletries but I at least want a towel I don’t need to scan for crime scene fluids.”

A second howl drifts over, and the weres in the team start pumping their fists. Well, except for Jackson, but even he looks resigned as opposed to, say, actively scornful. “Somebody’s still going to have to deal with the van,” he says. “That’s what Finstock is moaning about now to your mom, McCall.”

“Could we ask them if they have a tow truck?” Scott says hopefully as he comes up with Allison. “If not, I guess…well, what about if we hook it up to the jeep?”

“Nice idea, but I didn’t put that much horsepower into the engine,” Stiles says. He feels weirdly embarrassed for a second, even though it’s not like Scott would even think of expecting that from him. “I mean, we don’t usually end up having much left to drag home, you know?”

“There’s a bunch of weres, it’s just a van,” Derek says, as he peels off his coat. “It’s not that far. Unless you’re all worried about breaking your tendons.”

“You don’t break a tendon, you strain or tear it, and I don’t know why I’m even trying to straighten out your anatomy, God, tell him not to beat me up or I can’t help,” Jackson says, half to Derek, half to Stiles. 

Though it’s Lydia who jabs her finger at Derek. “Even with your subpar anatomical knowledge, you should know that werewolf healing doesn’t help when things are misaligned in the first place, so leave your pissing contest for the post-game dinner.”

She holds her finger out for a second, then abruptly unhooks from Jackson’s arm and stalks off. Allison had been eyeing her father, but she takes a step after Lydia, looking concerned. She hesitates, then ducks back to peck Scott’s cheek and wave to Chris, who looks torn again. Then she goes after Lydia, catching up and then walking with her back to Peter’s car.

“So here’s the game plan,” Stiles says to Scott. “Go to the new hotel and do our pregame stuff, alert my dad to the weirdness here and stick a pin in it for later.”

“Okay, it’s in a different county anyway,” Scott says. He looks at everybody, and then he sighs. “So…I’m guessing you want me to tell Finstock.”

“Well, you _are_ his pet,” Jackson says, and then he promptly assumes a cringing position as he looks at Stiles. “Anyway, I have to go get people for pushing the van, unless Derek feels like doing it the whole way.”

Stiles narrows his eyes, because he’s going to remember that, but…Scott is better at handling their coach. And Jackson’s just going to get in the way of Scott’s unique method of earnestly suggesting something till you feel absolutely horrible about turning him down. “Derek’s not the team packhorse,” he says. “Besides, you should be big on team-building exercises, shouldn’t you? That’s the captain’s job—excuse me, _co_ -captain.”

“Not that you’d know, since you always skip,” Jackson mutters. Derek growls at him and he twitches and then ducks his head. “Whatever, okay, fine, Stiles. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

Well, none of them are going to argue with him on that.

* * *

The new hotel is not a chain, not even a mediocre one. It’s a decrepit, dated independent that has peeling wallpaper and shag carpeting in one of the back hallways, and taps that spew rust-colored water for the first few seconds. The weres are speaking in the nasally voices you use when you’re trying desperately to not inhale, and Stiles overhears at least one of them pondering whether if he cuts off his nose and keeps it on ice, his super-healing will be able to reconnect it later. It’s the kind of place where when you turn the corner looking for the ice machine and you find yourself facing a motheaten stuffed bison head, you wonder who was actually bothered enough to stuff it back there.

But it’s not giving off haunted or homicidal vibes, so under the circumstances, it’s great.

Stiles is busy for the first hour or so after they arrive, since gossip’s gotten around enough to make everybody think that he somehow singlehandedly changed their travel plans. Which is not that far from the truth, but he didn’t do it so he could enable people’s nighttime plans (the hotel also has the advantage of being within walking distance of several stores and at least one bar) and he has to keep fending off teammates who seem to think he’ll be arranging some kind of nocturnal drunken walking tour, as if none of them have ever met Melissa McCall.

After that, a couple members of the local pack check in and Stiles has to go down and greet them with Peter. It’s nothing too complicated, just being polite and following up and checking that they don’t need to call in their alpha, and Peter does most of the talking, but they’re really talky and they take forever to shoo out. So long, in fact, that Stiles slips up and forgets that he was going to quiz them about the motel.

“I don’t think they’d know much of the background anyway,” Peter says as they walk back to their room. “This is border land, and it’s changed hands often, which is probably how the motel owners escaped notice in the first place. It was even Hale territory for a while.”

“Really?” Stiles says. “I didn’t think there was a lot of border-shifting anymore.”

Peter shrugs. “There isn’t, but this area floods easily, and every time the topography changes, we end up sitting down and redrawing the lines. We traded it off in my parents’ time, probably because we were tired of the fuss.”

“So, was that before or after what happened to…um.” Stiles pauses in the doorway of the bedroom, just as inside the room, Chris is stepping back from the dresser with a glass of water for somebody.

For Melissa, as it turns out. She’s sitting on one of the double beds with Scott and Allison, while Lydia and Jackson have the chairs and Derek is pacing back and forth by the window, arguing with somebody on the phone about pizza delivery times. Chris stiffens, looking at Stiles, and then takes a deep breath, hands Melissa the glass, and sits down by her.

“I guess we should fill people in,” he says.

Stiles shuts the door and then scribbles a hasty privacy ward on it with a piece of chalk. By the time he’s done, Peter has gotten Derek off the phone and taken up a perch on the other bed. “That other place has had several issues over the years,” Peter says.

He’s kind of interrupting and taking over, but Chris doesn’t look like he’s going to objecting, so Stiles doesn’t stop it. “How bad are these issues?” Stiles says. “I just told my dad that it didn’t feel right and we rebooked, but he’s gonna want more details.”

“I already told him he needs to sit tight and just be patient,” Melissa says. “Sometimes I see exactly where you came from, and sometimes it seems like you two are putting that up in flashing neon lights.”

Peter pauses for all of that, looking bemused, and then sobers up when it’s time for him to go into detail. “If I recall correctly, it started when they ran the new interstate on the other side of town. The current owners got into financial difficulties and began renting out to black market operators like necromancers. That was still when it was Hale territory—my grandparents learned of it, called in the authorities, and the owners were arrested and the place auctioned off.”

Derek blinks hard, then jabs his finger over his shoulder, at the window. “Wait, that’s _that_ place? The one you and Mom used to make up Halloween stories about?”

“Well, to be honest, most of those weren’t made up so much as sanitized,” Peter says. “The motel was empty for a while before it was auctioned, and we were told our grandparents went in and tried to have the place cleansed, but they weren’t able to deal with everything. There were—they had other matters on their mind, and then this whole area was traded between several packs before it finally went to the Hastings-Wintun pack. Who would’ve been told of the problem, but…”

“This is on the border, they probably had a hard time keeping an eye on it,” Chris abruptly breaks in. He still looks tense, but he’s also got Melissa’s hand on his wrist, and he sort of nudges her leg with his knuckles as he talks. “Also, the next owner was a little better at keeping things under wraps. Didn’t rent out to people who were doing illegal magic, just did it himself in the basement. Local cops finally noticed they were being called out a lot for suicides, and had an Argent look into it.”

Allison sits up very straight, almost shaking off the arm Scott has around her. “What? Who? Did I know them?”

“No. I didn’t even…Alexander was my…my mother’s second cousin,” Chris says. He frowns for a few seconds, working to remember. “He was born and raised in France, and he’d only been in the U.S. for a couple years…I think he was courting somebody from a family north of here. Anyway, he was around, and took the assignment, except he couldn’t figure it out before the place got hold of him. He…shot himself in one of the rooms—”

Allison bites her lip, her hand going down to grab at Scott’s. He hugs her, while on the parents’ side, Melissa gives Chris a quick glance; Chris actually seems more worried about Allison’s reaction and he relaxes when he sees she’s just looking nervous for him. 

“—but he managed to make a couple calls first and the place got shut down again.” Chris pauses again, and this time he does look a little strained. “Alexander was pretty high up on the French side of the family, so him dying was a…it was a big deal. The head of the family came over and personally made sure. They couldn’t just destroy the place—it’s so old it got designated as historic at some point, but it was supposed to be locked up for good.”

Peter hums thoughtfully. “And no accidental destruction, historic status or not?”

That is cutting it a little bit close, and Melissa shoots Peter a sharp look. Chris, on the other hand, just treats it as a straight question. “Well, unless I’m remembering wrong, when they shut it down, they still hadn’t figured out the exact cause. And Mireille wouldn’t have been able to send in a team to figure it out without attracting attention, and after that…my mother was dead and my father wasn’t interested. I guess we lost track of it.”

He gets a little bit guilty at the end, in kind of a vicious way. Peter’s brows go up, and then he changes his mind about whatever he’d been about to ask, letting Melissa give Chris a couple comforting pats on the knee without snarky commentary.

“Yeah, well, I’ll let Dad know all of that, and he’ll call up somebody and make sure a team goes out,” Stiles says. “Might not be the Service, but he’ll get somebody. He hates having this kind of loose end nearby.”

Melissa moves her hand and then folds her lips together. She’s holding back something she wants to say, though she looks a lot less urgent about it once Chris nods. “That’s probably the best idea,” he mutters, rubbing at his face. He gives Allison a warning look of some kind and Allison looks a little frustrated, but not like she’s going to push it. “I’ll stop by the office when we’re back, fill him in.”

“And in the meantime, I think we’d better go walk the halls and make sure none of your teammates decide it’d liven up the night to wander back over there,” Melissa says, standing up. She gives her lap a brisk dusting, then gives both Peter and Chris pointed looks; Chris looks guilty again, while Peter just sighs and pecks Stiles’ temple and gets up. “Mr. Finstock is a good person, but I don’t think for a second that any of you are going to listen to him.”

“Mom, we’re not going anywhere,” Scott protests, on their collective behalf. He and Stiles look at each other, and then he sighs and gets up, and moves around the bed to follow Melissa. “But I guess it wouldn’t hurt for the co-captain to go warn everybody again, too. I’m not sure everybody understood Finstock’s speech.”

“I think they’ll understand triple drills for every idiot who leaves us short at the game because they got their ghost hunters thrill on,” Jackson mutters, also getting up.

So Melissa and Chris and Peter and the co-captains leave, and that leaves Allison and Lydia and Stiles. Who all look at Derek, who’s busy checking something on his phone. “I don’t know how that’s a threat if this place ends up hurting them, they couldn’t do drills then anyway,” he says. “Pizza tracker says another five min—what?”

“Aren’t you technically a chaperone too?” Lydia says, raising her brows. She still looks a little tense, but her sarcasm’s certainly recovered. “So shouldn’t you be enforcing curfew with the rest of them?”

Derek raises his brows right back at her. “You don’t think that five people can keep an eye on a bunch of teenage lacrosse players?”

“Well, somebody’s gotta watch this end of the hallway,” Stiles says, and Derek smirks. “Till Peter gets back. And don’t give me the pissy puppy eyes, Derek, we gotta be fair, and fair isn’t making Peter and Chris and Melissa hunt down my teammates all night.”

“But Peter _enjoys_ that sort of thing,” Derek protests. “He gets a kick out of permanently traumatizing people.”

Lydia makes a disbelieving noise, and when Derek looks at her, glances pointedly to Jackson’s bag in the corner. “I gotta admit, that’s not your strongest argument,” Stiles says, slinging his arm over Derek’s shoulders. “Even though we both know it’s a _totally_ different kind of trauma you bring to the table, totally, and let’s just chill out and enjoy the semi-decent non-homicidal hotel, okay?”

Derek is grumpy, but he noses into the side of Stiles’ throat anyway. “Fine,” he says. “At least we don’t have to do anything tonight.”

Stiles frowns for a second. He’s not superstitious, mostly because he’s spent a lot of his life debunking superstitions with his father and being very aggravated about the problems that come up when other people buy into them. But he does have a pretty fine-tuned sense of weird wrongness, which is a completely separate thing, and…he just kind of feels like maybe Derek shouldn’t be saying that yet.

But then Derek cocks his head, and announces the pizza is here, and Stiles’ stomach growls enthusiastically in response—convincing Finstock to not check them into Freddy Kruger’s retirement home revs up the metabolism, apparently—and Stiles pushes it aside. After all, it’s not like they’re naïve idiots. No, they’re well-trained, knowledgeable individuals who are already doing everything they can to make sure that the movie cliché doesn’t happen. So there’s no reason why things should play out differently.

* * *

There’s also no reason, once Stiles’ father has been alerted, to _not_ do a little independent research from the safety of their AAA-reviewed, local-pack-recommended hotel. Of course Stiles is curious, but Allison and Lydia are super-involved as well, ditching their room to congregate with phones and laptops in Stiles’ room.

Lydia’s just a touch manic about it, in a way that has them all deliberately not asking just what her banshee senses picked up. Which is also probably why Jackson ends up there, grumbling and moaning about how much he does not care about vintage evil hippies, in between his and Scott’s shifts checking on teammates. He’s annoying, and also, always makes Scott come back to get him rather than start his shift when he’s up, but Lydia seems to be calmer around him so Stiles leaves it.

Allison’s a little uptight too. A couple times Chris stops by to poke his head in, and they talk to each other in that passive-aggressively polite way of theirs where Allison’s semi-poking at previous fights they’ve had and Chris feels bad about them and everybody else just really, really wishes they weren’t listening in on it. But then Chris and she go out to buy spare toiletries for people who forgot toothpaste and whatever, and when they come back, she’s…still kind of annoyed with him but it’s died down to resignation. Also, she has a couple new details that let Stiles finally pull up the shutdown records on the motel.

The place wasn’t near any parkland, so the Service doesn’t have anything, and weirdly enough, it doesn’t look like it ever got kicked up to something like the FBI, even though a _lot_ of obituaries are popping up. A lot. “You know, as far as historic preservation goes, it could almost qualify under cemeteries, too,” Stiles mutters. “Wonder if the locals had anything to do with that.”

“You mean the local pack?” Lydia says. “Well, can’t you ask?”

“Yeah, I know, I will when they come back.” Speaking of which, Stiles checks his phone again. Derek had gone out to bring Peter and Melissa and Chris pizza, and then, predictably, Peter had sucked him into an argument that Peter and Melissa were having with the management about some other guest who had complained about noisy teenagers. 

Which isn’t a big deal by itself, but they’ve been gone long enough for Stiles’ paranoia to start wondering if they have an accidental body situation or something like that. Stiles texts Derek again, then Peter, and when he doesn’t get a response back, he gets up and goes to the door.

He’s got his hand on the knob when the runes he scrawled in chalk on the back flare up. Stiles yelps, Allison scrambles off the bed and darts across the room to grab her portable crossbow from the dresser, and then they both watch as the door very, very slowly opens.

“You know that that’s Scott, right?” Jackson says, right as the end of a phone is wiggled past the door.

“Hey, it’s me,” Scott says. He waits a few seconds, which is long enough for Allison to heave a sigh of relief and lower the crossbow, and then he opens the door the rest of the way and comes in. “Sorry.”

Stiles huffs out a breath and drops onto the nearest bed, pulling at his hair. “Jesus, Scotty, it’s like you’re trying to get shot. Why the hell are you setting off my danger runes?”

“Also, why do you people have a routine for not getting shot in the face?” Jackson mutters, staring back and forth between them. Like the too-late-to-be-helpful observant asshole he is. “Is this like when Stiles needed to buy a car, and we found out he’s a deadly weapon behind the wheel?”

They ignore him. Scott, Stiles suddenly notices, is panting a little bit, and he’s also got what looks like his mom’s travel bag over his shoulder. Not Melissa’s clothes bag. Her travel bag, where she keeps her emergency medical supplies, and also, the occasional Service-issued weapon. Which would explain why Scott is setting off the alarm wards.

“So, um, we have a problem,” Scott says. He shuts the door behind him, takes a deep breath to catch up on his air, and then waves vaguely in the direction of the parking lot. “I went to go check on Greenberg and Torres, and they’re not in their room. And I ran into Danny, and he was saying that Booth was bugging Greenberg and daring him to go back to the motel, just ‘cause Greenberg’s great-grandma was a spirit medium, and Isaac says he saw him and Torres going out and it was supposed to be for beer, but it’s been way too long—”

Jackson’s already slapped his hand to his face, partly covering up his expression of extreme resentment. “God _damn_ it, Torres. Did I or did I not tell you we were already on third-string defenders?”

Stiles looks at Lydia, who gives him a face like, he is actually worried, do you have to be a perfectionist (McCall) and need it to be for the right reason too? So Stiles gives up on that and grabs his coat, and then drops down to start digging in Peter’s bag. His dad has pretty strict ideas about the kinds of weapons that Stiles is and is not allowed to pack for school trips—which, to be fair, has cut down on the number of dumbass classmates accidentally injuring themselves when they try to mess with Stiles’ stuff—but he trusts that Peter will have something good.

And his trust is totally repaid when he comes up with a portable knife kit for dressing game. Between that, the taser he’s got in the jeep and whatever Melissa packed, he should be cool even without the tree. “Okay, so how much of a lead do they have on us? It was a pretty long walk here, at least—”

“But that’s because we had to stay on the road and push the van,” Allison points out. She’s got her coat half-shrugged on and is folding up her crossbow for transport. “I bet it’s a lot shorter if you just cut across those fields we went past, and Enrique’s a quarter quetzalcoatl.”

“He’s also drunk and he’s tagging along with Greenberg. I don’t think he’ll be going at top speed,” Jackson says. He’s taken his hand off his face and is watching Stiles and Allison with increasing nervousness. “Wait, what are you people doing? We’ve just spent the last two hours reading up about how that place brainwashes you into killing yourself. And you said you’d leave it for people who actually know how to deal with that kind of thing.”

Allison rolls her eyes as she slips a spare crossbow bolt into her boot. “You mean like federally-licensed hunters?”

“Okay, you aren’t actually licensed, and your dad’s on a provisional,” Stiles has to point out. When she shoots him the expected dirty look, Stiles holds his hands up, because hey, it’s the truth. And then he hands her the knife kit so that he can pull on his coat. “Anyway. Jackson. Rest assured that experts _are_ on this, and the only reason I was putting it off before was because it wasn’t an immediate emergency and the Service kind of put me on a quota for extra-jurisdictional…whatever, it’s on me, okay? So I hate to say this, but Chris and Peter have faster cars, so I’ll go with Peter and—”

Up till now, Scott’s been patiently waiting for them to get all the weapons together, as he does, but he suddenly frowns. Then, of all things, he grabs Stiles’ arm and starts dragging him out the door. “I think we gotta get going first,” he says. “Isaac said he last saw Torres and Greenberg twenty minutes ago. They could almost be there by now.”

“Um, wait, Scott, seriously—Scott, c’mon. Scott. _Scott_.” Stiles shakes his buddy’s hand off, but Scott just keeps going, turning down the hall and then hurrying down the nearest staircase. “Scott, Scott, we can’t just take off, we gotta—wait, do you mean you didn’t tell your mom? Or Chris?”

“Mom texted me earlier, she’s busy helping this girl on the sixth floor who had an asthma attack,” Scott says. He pulls his phone out and waves it over his shoulder, and then puts it away, still going down the stairs. “And I think Chris went out. His car’s not in the parking lot.”

Allison’s rushed after them and has almost caught up to Stiles, but she falls back as she tries to check her phone. “Oh, he said, he realized he’s low on gas and he went to get some. That was five minutes ago, but I’ll call him.”

“So Peter and Derek—” Stiles starts.

They’re just about at the bottom of the stairs, so when Scott whirls around, eyes glowing, shifting in and out like he can’t control it, which hasn’t been a problem for him since before Stiles’ mom died. “Stiles, we can’t just—they could be there already!” Scott hisses. “And you’ve got the tree and I’ve got those charms you made me, but Torres is drunk and Greenberg’s got psychics in the family, and weren’t you saying that most of the suicides were addicts and psychics? We can’t just—what if they die before we get them? They’re our friends!”

“Yeah, I know, but we can’t just run off either,” Stiles snaps.

“Why not?” Scott says, uncharacteristically harsh. And he knows it too, and he puts his hand up and starts rumpling at his hair, but he’s also edging backwards at the same time. “Look, I can go ahead. I’m the co-captain anyway, if my teammates are sneaking out, it’s my—”

“Okay, do not pull that bullshit on me, I’m the one who taught you to invoke the greater good as a cover story in the first place,” Stiles says, grabbing at Scott’s arm. “We’re gonna get them, and it’s gonna be in time. We just can’t run over by ourselves.”

“Stiles, we do that all the time,” Scott says, tugging at his arm. “Anyway, if Mom’s busy and Chris isn’t here, who’s going to chaperone people? Somebody’s gotta stay and help Finstock. Can we just get going? You can call them on the way. That’s what you usually do.”

Which is true, and for a second Stiles doesn’t even know why he’s fighting this so hard. Sure, he doesn’t know exactly what’s the matter with the motel, but being a tree guardian—who finally has a properly-bonded tree, too—gives him immunity against most types of mental derangements, since the stuff that makes humans go bonkers tends to just make plants a little quizzical and then they shake their leaves and go back to sipping blood (with the handy side-effect of grounding their guardian). And normally it’s Scott who’s trying to hold them back and asking why they can’t just wait for—right.

“Yeah, I know, but I don’t want to get Peter and Derek just because I need to let them know not to worry about me,” Stiles says, firmly winding his fingers around Scott’s wrist. “Scott, we actually have reinforcements for once. That I don’t have to trick into helping. So let me just—”

“What’s going on?” Derek asks, magically appearing out of the shadowy stairwell, like he’s got an extra sense for cool entrances. “I can hear you guys arguing all the way across the—”

“Teammates in danger, motel, must go, you wanna drive?” Stiles says, twisting around so his jeans pocket with the car keys is aimed at Derek. “Also, where’s Peter?”

Derek doesn’t have to be asked twice about driving. He does, however, slow walk backwards towards the parking lot, even after Stiles switches from holding onto Scott to koala-smushing into Derek’s front. Which normally gets Derek on the fast track to wherever, no questions asked. “He went to go talk to the Hastings-Wintun people again, I don’t know why. I think he’s nosing around for more gossip about the motel, and why do we have to go there? At this hour?”

“You are _nocturnal_ ,” Stiles says, exasperated, tightening his legs around Derek’s middle and then slapping at Derek’s shoulder. “Look, just get in the—”

“Stiles!” Lydia yells.

“Scott! Scott, wait!” Allison calls at the same time, her voice already faltering in frustration. And then she’s jogging up by Stiles and Derek, one arm thrown back to point out the werewolf disappearing into the empty field beside the hotel. “He just _went_.”

Stiles scrabbles at his hip, and then remembers that Scott has the medical kit with all the tranquilizer darts. He swears, then looks at Derek. “Greenberg and Torres are idiots so Scott is being heroically stupid, okay? That’s why we have to go.”

“Got it,” Derek says. And then he swivels _away_ from the jeep. “Look, I can break into Peter’s car a lot faster than yours gets into the right gear, okay?”

“Oh, my God, just, whatever, prove it before my teammates get mindwhacked, would you?” Stiles snaps.

* * *

Derek proves it. Derek also decides that speeding close to ninety miles an hour over shitty country roads is the best time to get into applied physics. “It’s just we’d go faster if we didn’t have so many people crammed in here, it weighs down the car,” he says, blowing by some barbed wire. “If we’re getting three people, do we need to bring five?”

“Seven, Dad says he’s got Peter and they’re heading over. Melissa’s going to stay and deal with Finstock and watch the rest of the team, and also coordinate with the local police and pack and that stuff,” Allison says, putting her phone away. She looks a little uncomfortable, and it’s not just because she’s wedged into the backseat with Jackson and Lydia. “Melissa’s, um, she’s…not happy with Scott.”

“Well, what, are you?” Stiles mutters. He forgot to get his taser and his spare magic stuff out of the jeep before they got in Peter’s car, so he’s poking through the glove compartment and all the other storage areas, trying to figure out what Peter’s got that would be good for warding off evil influences.

There’s a jar of salt and a couple vials of what looks like water, but they’re not labeled, annoyingly enough, so Stiles keeps the salt and sets the vials aside. He does dig up a couple pieces of chalk in different colors, which will let him do some more complex casting, but otherwise it’s a pretty paltry haul. Which is a little…Stiles doesn’t want to say disappointing, but it’s definitely not what he’d been expecting. Then again, while Peter’s very knowledgeable about magic, he doesn’t really do a lot of spellwork outside of keeping up the wards on the Hale house.

Derek takes a turn like an action-flick stunt driver, casually flinging an arm out to snag Stiles’ arm and keep Stiles from smashing out through the window, like the surprisingly thoughtful badass beta he is. When he’s done with that, he screeches to a stop and Stiles, a little breathless (just because he does this a lot doesn’t mean that he’s some inhumanly serious robot), drags himself up his seat and looks into the back, just in time to catch Allison rubbing her face.

She is _not_ happy with Scott, that’s clear, but the way she’s not happy is kind of surprising. It’s not so much that she looks resentful for being left behind as that she looks…she’s got the same expression on her face that Stiles’ dad sometimes gets with Stiles when Stiles has gone and been reckless and he’s hiding his near-heart attack with a scolding.

“Let’s just get them first, and then I can be mad at him,” Allison mutters. She’s fumbling with something around her throat, and then metal glints between her fingers and her neck and Stiles can just make out a protective amulet. “Just, God, Dad’s bad enough sometimes, and Scott _gets_ that, and he still…never mind, I’m rambling.”

Stiles starts to say something, twitches as the driver’s door jerks open—Derek’s stepping out to get a scent—and then gives himself a sharp shake. “Are you okay? And I don’t mean that in a patronizing way, I mean that in a, Scott has the tranqs so we’re possibly in a shoot-to-disable situation and you’re the one with the range weapon way.”

Allison chews at her lip, her eyes flicking up to him and then back down. Her fingers are a little awkward about stuffing the amulet under her blouse, but then she gets them untangled from her necklace and she holds them up. She might look a little nervous, but her hands are rock-steady; she looks at Stiles through them, her chin lifting ever-so-slightly. “I’m good. I just want to keep this from getting worse.”

“I’m sure he’s fine, just stupid,” Stiles mutters. “He’s been in cursed places with me before, he knows basic de-hallucination measures. At least, he’d better still know them because I spent a whole spring break turning them into mnemonics for…whatever. So, you two staying here with the car?”

Stiles turns to Lydia and Jackson. Predictably, Jackson gets all posed to deliver an emphatic ‘duh’ of a positive, and then he picks up the odd vibes coming off Lydia. His face contorts a little, fighting its natural default arrogance, and then he looks at Lydia and he’s a little whiny but not nearly as much as would be expected. Actually, he mostly sounds nervous.

“Seriously?” Jackson says. “Lydia, we’re already here because McCall had to go and pull some one-man hero routine, it’s not like we need more of that.”

“Do I look like I’m dressed for heroics? I have current-season Prada on, for God’s sake,” Lydia says, brow raised, head tilted, perfect manicure flashing as she drums her fingers along the side of the driver’s seat. But she’s still hesitating. “Stiles. What’s going on in there—I might not invade haunted places for kicks like you, but I am a banshee, and it’s not just restless spirits. They…they don’t sound right.”

“Yeah, I was figuring, and it’s cool, we’re not going to be exorcising anything. We’re just going and getting dumbass Greenberg and Torres, and then we’re gonna come straight back out and go back and get suspended from the team,” Stiles says, as reassuringly as he can. He even resists the urge to snap at Jackson’s ill-timed wince. “After the game, yeah, whatever. Anyway, I’m gonna draw some protective sigils before we go in and you’ll be okay so long as you stay with the car.”

Derek comes back and taps the top of the car to get their attention. “I can hear them,” he says. “They’re not even inside yet. They’re over by the back entrance, Scott’s chewing them out but Torres is puking.”

“Do they sound okay?” Allison asks. There’s a pause, and then she sighs. “I mean, do they sound like themselves?”

“Well, like I said, Torres is throwing up, and Greenberg’s…making some excuse about seeing stuff like this on Youtube,” Derek says.

Jackson and Stiles momentarily sync up as Stiles thumps the heel of his hand against his forehead, while Jackson lets his head flop back against the seat. “Well, now we know Greenberg’s not possessed,” Jackson mutters. “Too bad, it’d probably make him smarter.”

“Scott…sounds really mad,” Derek then goes on. He doesn’t sound alarmed, but he definitely sounds like it’s something to take note of. “Really mad. Torres is asking him why’s he freaking out.”

Stiles and Allison look at each other, and then Stiles grabs the salt and the chalk he scrounged from Peter’s stash and starts to get out of the car. Scott is even-tempered to the point of angelic at times, but he can and does lose his shit once in a while. Which is never a good sign.

“Wait, just—” Lydia reaches out, climbing over a cursing Jackson, and then grabs Stiles’ hand just as he’s about to chalk the door. “You know if it’s some kind of necromancy spell, banshees won’t be affected.”

“If…you’re trying to volunteer, um, you don’t have to.” Stiles switches the chalk to his other hand so he can at least get the runes down while he’s talking; he can see Allison fidgeting with her crossbow out of the corner of his eye. “I mean, it’s appreciated and all, but nobody’s gonna—and we get it if you’re freaked out, you know, it’s not like any of us really want to go in there.”

Lydia sniffs and tosses her head a little, just enough to get her hair over her shoulder, and then she levels a look at Stiles that’s half-irritated, half-determined. “Unlike some people, I don’t have any need to prove my manhood with silly dares,” she says, and then she takes a deep breath. “That said—Stiles, every report I’ve ever read about magic like that talks about how fast things can go wrong.”

“Yeah. Yeah, believe me, I know, there was this time in…” It’s a second before Stiles realizes he paused for Scott to chime in, because Scott always chimes in, and he tries to cover up the sudden, unpleasant twist in his belly by scrawling runes down the side of the open car door. “So that’s a really good reason why we always have somebody stay back, so if shit goes down, they can coordinate the cavalry. Peter and Chris should be here any second anyway, and I’m pretty sure Chris is—um—”

Luckily, Allison not only doesn’t take offense, she even piggybacks on Stiles’ comment with a dry one of her own. “Oh, Dad is going to be bonkers, especially since Melissa’s upset. He still can’t believe she’s forgiven him for all the crap he put Scott through when we first started dating.”

“Okay, well, there you are. Panicky hunter and Peter, not a great combination, definitely going to need a mediator,” Stiles says. He straightens up and checks over the runes, and then nods hurriedly when Derek catches his eye and then makes a hurry-up gesture. “If they’re outside, this should take what, five minutes? I’m just done at this point, we’ll knock them out and worry about potential assault and battery charges later.”

“Oh, if we’re going with that, three minutes,” Derek says.

“Forget that, whenever my father gets out of his client meetings, he’ll have something to say about their infliction of emotional distress,” Jackson says, reassuring as only he can be.

Stiles just stops himself from rolling his eyes, and concentrates on Lydia. “So if we’re not back around the corner in five, then tell Peter and Chris,” he says. “Or if I text you. My phone’s warded to work in anything short of a total null zone. Just don’t actually come running in, got it?”

Lydia nods. Under the bitchy act, she’s starting to look a little more grounded, and she even manages a disappointed sigh as Stiles finally leans back. “If I’d known this would happen, I would have brought along the infrasonic prototype,” she mutters.

Stiles snorts and waves and then hurries up to catch Derek and Allison, who’ve started across the street to the motel. Derek automatically raises his arm for Stiles to duck under it, and then frowns as Stiles starts patting down his pockets. “It’s on my car keys, and it’s fresh, Mom just had all our charms renewed, I’m good,” he says. “I thought you were always complaining about how you had to sneak off by yourself to get anything done.”

“Well, yeah, I did, but if I had the choice, I’d totally take somebody coordinating at my back,” Stiles mutters. “Just because I wing it sometimes doesn’t mean I don’t know how you should do it, and I’ve watched my dad do it right enough times, and should we really be having this discussion now? Shouldn’t we be figuring out our approach?”

“Sure, fine,” Derek says, giving Stiles a slightly concerned, sidelong look. “So Torres is done puking, but now he’s saying he doesn’t think he can walk, and Scott’s still trying to talk Greenberg out of going in long enough to grab some ice, which is what they told him to get to prove he’d actually been inside.”

Allison slings her crossbow from her hip and charges up her taser, shaking her head. “I don’t even see how that’s supposed to work. It’s going to melt first.”

“It’s Greenberg,” Stiles says, and then they round the corner.

Torres, shakily propping himself up against the wall, sees them first. His eyes widen and then a crest of bright green feathers suddenly pops up on his head, fanning out in alarm as he tries to backpedal from Derek. Who is admittedly grinning with way more teeth than necessary.

“Hey, guys,” Torres says weakly, which attracts Scott and Greenberg’s attention.

Greenberg seems to think that they’re for Scott, and takes a step towards the motel door. Allison promptly raises her taser and points it at him. “Don’t even,” she says.

“I’m human!” Greenberg squeaks. “You’re not allowed to do that!”

“Yeah, well, _you’re_ breaking curfew and a zillion other rules and if you don’t get your ass in gear, I’m going to pick it up and sling it straight home,” Derek says.

“I don’t think you can do that,” Greenberg says. “Coach Finstock—”

Derek cracks his neck, and then checks a couple of his freshly-popped claws. “I’m a chaperone. I can do whatever I feel like.”

“You actually can’t,” Scott says. “Not that any of us should be here—”

“Excuse me, I said _chaperone_ ,” Derek says. He’s doing a sort of drawl, an unimpressed smile on his face, and after a second Stiles realizes Derek is imitating Peter’s _children_ tone. “That goes for you too, McCall. Start walking.”

Scott opens his mouth, a familiar mulish glint coming into his eye, because he always wants to do the right thing, and that includes standing up to abuses of authority even when he’s the whole reason why they’re abusing authority to save his butt. And then Allison walks over and throws her arms around him—still with her taser aimed to take out either Torres or Greenberg, Stiles is amused to see—and all that stubbornness dissolves in a chagrined pat at her shoulder.

“God, we were so _worried_ ,” she says. “Scott, you just ran off, and you didn’t wait for us and we were only a couple minutes behind and I didn’t know what to think. I was scared for you.”

“Oh, hey, I’m sor—I’m fine, okay?” Scott says, letting her slowly drag him back towards the corner. He twitches as Derek passes them and grabs Greenberg and Torres by an arm each, but then winces as Allison buries her head in his shoulder. “We’re all okay, nothing even happened, so we can all go—”

Of course, that’s when there’s a muffled thump from somewhere above them, and Stiles’ phone buzzes madly with the Lydia buzz, and all the weres’ heads shoot up.

Scott jerks out of Allison’s grip, stepping to the side and looking at a second-floor balcony. His eyes are wide, and then they narrow. “Stiles, somebody’s trying to hurt themselves,” he says.

Then he jumps up onto the balcony. Stiles gets halfway through a futile yell at him, realizes exactly how futile that is, and swears and slaps his hand to his face, shifting into damage-control mode. The slap happens to rotate him around and he sees…Melissa’s bag, which Scott has forgotten all about.

Stiles grabs that and then goes up to the back door. He gets the handle and then hears somebody moving up behind him, and barely remembers that right, they actually have company on this stupid trip. “Okay, we’re gonna see what it is, but—”

He’s turning as he speaks. Allison’s run right up to him, while Derek’s still back with Torres and Greenberg, fighting to keep the two from taking off in a panic for the fields. Derek obviously wants to drop them and come over, but Stiles shakes his head and waves him off.

“Get them clear, come back, faster you do that, faster you can come back,” Stiles snaps. “Allison and I are going in but we’ll get out onto the balcony and wait there. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Derek snarls, pissed about it, but not about to disobey.

He drags Torres and Greenberg off, while Allison pushes Stiles aside and then jerks at the door. The place is so shady that they don’t even passkey-lock the outer doors and it immediately opens; she’s wary enough to have switched to her crossbow and she keeps it leveled as she and Stiles duck inside and then creep up the nearest staircase (elevators are for people who’ve never seen a horror movie).

“That was Lydia’s ringtone, right?” Allison whispers to Stiles. “What’d she say? Is Dad here yet?”

Stiles fumbles his phone out—he’s trying to sprinkle salt behind them at the same time—and quickly checks it. “No, it’s about…she’s warning us that she heard somebody psyching themselves up to jump off something.”

They look at each other, and then Allison breathes in deep and takes the first step onto the second floor. The hallway is empty, but Stiles makes her wait till he’s tossed salt in all directions. “I think it was that room,” Allison says, tugging at his arm.

A couple seconds later, that door opens, and a wild-eyed Scott steps out. He starts when he sees them; Allison jumps too, but she yanks her crossbow down to compensate so she doesn’t lose her bead on him.

“Scotty?” Stiles says. “Scott, so what’d you do to my Bugs Bunny sneakers when we were five?”

“I tried to eat them, come on, I got him down but he’s—is that my mom’s bag?” Scott says, his eyes zeroing in on the bag slung over Stiles’ bag. “Oh, good, get that over here, I need it.”

Stiles and Allison come over, but when Scott reaches for the bag, Stiles slaps off his hand. Scott steps back, blinking in surprise, and that’s when Allison grabs him by the shoulders and drags him into the room, and then gives him a good shaking. “Scott, you—you—” she’s so frustrated she can’t even verbalize for a second “—stop scaring us!”

“Oh, shit,” Stiles says. Because sure, he’s also really exasperated with Scott right now, but…

…there’s a man lying on the floor, a bit of rope still loosely slung around his neck, and his body has that slackness that never means good things. Stiles shoves aside his temper for the moment and drops next to the guy, yanking open the zipper on Melissa’s bag. The metal teeth have barely parted before Scott’s got his hand in there, pulling out a loaded syringe. “Here,” he says, shoving it at Stiles. “I gotta get back to CPR, when he starts breathing, hit him with it.”

Before Stiles can ask what’s in the syringe, Scott’s hunched over the man’s face. A couple huffs and the man suddenly stirs. Scott backs off, then hisses and grabs at the man’s hands, which flail out and—are trying to go for the power cord on a nearby lamp.

“Stiles!” Scott hisses.

Who jabs the syringe into the man’s arm. The man spasms against Scott’s grip, then rolls his head over and blinks and looks at them like he’s just waking up. “Who the…why are you in my room?” he rasps. “What…”

“Balcony, we said we’d get out on the balcony,” Allison says. She’s already got the door open and she turns around, crossbow still in hand, to wave for them to get over to her.

Scott wisely isn’t arguing anymore. He grabs the man’s shoulders, Stiles grabs the man’s feet, and they haul him across the threshold and out into the night air. Allison slams the door behind them, then breathes heavily, slumping against it.

The man’s still trying to ask them questions, confused and increasingly upset, and then he finds the rope around his neck and he lets out a little scream, jerking his hand away like it’s a live snake. Of course, Scott’s been trying to reassure the guy the entire time, and now he grabs the man’s arm before the man can hurt himself trying to slap off the rope.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” Scott says. “We stopped you.”

“But—but I can still hear it!” the man says, wild-eyed, pointing a shaking hand over Scott’s shoulder. “Can’t you hear it? The hissing? My God, they’re in the _walls_.”

“Okay, sure they are, and let’s just leave them in there while we exit stage down,” Stiles says, pulling himself up by the rail. He looks over it and sees Derek running up underneath, and oh, good, Peter’s right behind him. “It’s not that bad a drop, just remember to bend your knees.”

The man isn’t listening. “I can hear them talking to me!” he’s saying over and over again. “I turned down the thermostat and it’s like it woke them!”

“Let’s just get off of here, and then you won’t hear them anymore,” Allison says. She comes over and grabs one arm, while Stiles grabs the other, and together they heft the mostly-unresisting guy up onto the rail.

He’s also not really cooperating, annoyingly enough, but Derek and Peter are right under the balcony now and the man is so worked up that Stiles figures he won’t notice a little extra terror. “On three,” Stiles says to Allison, with a tiny double shake of his head.

They shove the guy over on two, because Allison knows pro signals like that, and then Stiles hops up onto the rail himself. He snags Melissa’s bag with his foot and slings it over into Peter’s waiting hand, then reaches back to give Allison a hand up. And then he’s about to jump when he realizes that Allison is missing her usual Scott attachment.

“Scott,” Allison hisses, noticing at the same time. “Scott, what are you doing, my dad’s here! We gotta go!”

For some reason Scott is staring up at the roof. He’s got his back to them and he doesn’t immediately respond, and for a horrible second icy fear creeps into Stiles’ belly. 

Then Stiles shakes it off and yanks out the last packet of salt, because he’ll be damned if he lets a _motel_ eat his best friend. He’s about to fling it at Scott’s head when Scott suddenly steps back. Scott looks over his shoulder at them and his face shifts seamlessly from stunned to quizzical in a way that only he can do. And then, for good measure, he blinks hard and reaches up to ruffle at his hair, in perfect Scott-distraction.

“Stiles,” he says, before Stiles can even start to be relieved about the lack of possessed buddy. “Stiles, oh, my God, it’s the _air conditioner_. He said in the walls, and it started when he turned on—”

“Scott, get your ass and my daughter down here right _now_ ,” Chris Argent yells from the parking lot. It’s probably the first time Stiles has ever been glad to have somebody’s parent shouting at them. “Forget the air conditioner, we can get that later—”

“Nope, bad move,” Stiles mutters, jumping off the rail.

He grabs onto Scott’s back just as his friend takes a flying leap up onto the roof. Allison screams after them, and Stiles hears a distinctly wincing grunt from Scott. But the moment they land, Scott starts scrambling across the roof. Doesn’t even stop to dump Stiles off his back, and Stiles is using all of his dead-weight tricks against that werewolf strength.

“Look, we gotta shut it down, I can hear other guests,” Scott is saying. He heads straight for a small shed on the roof with tell-tale whirring sounds coming out of it. “I know, but I’m just gonna cut the power, okay?”

“Scott, listen, I know you’re worried about these people but we don’t know what the hell’s been done up here and that charm I made you is only good against—Scott, do not make me Vulcan-grip you, I swear,” Stiles snaps, dragging back on Scott’s shoulders. He swings his feet down and does his best to dig his heels into the roof, but Scott just keeps going. “I will knock you out, I’ve totally done it before—”

“But people are going to die!” Scott cries. He twists half around, clearly going to say more, and then his eyes widen as he sees Stiles’ expression. And that Stiles is looking at something in front of them.

Scott whips back around, just in time for Derek to fist his hand in the front of Scott’s shirt and lift _both_ of them. Just for a second, and the whole werewolf strongman act is so old that the cliché is a cliché, but…Stiles admits to having an embarrassing little flutter anyway. Derek doesn’t even huff when he does it. No, he just glares, pure undiluted exasperation.

Then he lets Stiles’ and Scott’s feet touch down, but only so that he can drag them towards the edge of the roof. “Shut up,” he says, as Scott opens his mouth. “Peter’s cutting the power.”

Right then there’s a ringing metallic clank, and the whirring in the shed stops, and the whole area around the motel gets—well, it was pretty gloomy to begin with, as befitting a creepy suicide magnet, but it gets just that much shadier, as if the place is slowly sinking into a shadowy pit of horror. “Peter found the fusebox?” Stiles says.

“Yep,” Derek says. He abruptly releases Scott and then holds out his hand as Scott stumbles forward.

Stiles gets off his friend, because aggravated as he is with Scott, he’s not actually trying to squish the guy. Derek promptly scoops him up by the waist, and then starts eyeing Scott’s back, so Stiles twists around and hikes himself up, wrapping koala-style around Derek so the man has to keep his hands on Stiles. “No throwing Scott off the roof,” he says.

Derek makes a face at him. “I wasn’t going to throw him off. Just…kick his ankle if he ran off _again_.”

“I’m going, I’m going,” Scott says. He climbs up onto the edge, sighing and looking very mournful, as if he’s back to his usual long-suffering self and is the one getting dragged into trouble. “I just wanted to make sure everybody will be okay, I don’t actually want to be—Mom!”

Well, actually, it’s more like ‘Moooooooom!’ because Scott yelps just as his feet come off the roof, and then stretches that out all the way to what sounds like a very flustered landing. Stiles winces, then hits Derek on the shoulder.

“C’mon, c’mon,” he says. “I want off too, and also, holy shit, Melissa’s here, you _know_ it’s going down now.”

“So you want to go towards that?” Derek says.

Stiles thinks about it, and then reluctantly concludes that yes, evil psychic motel is worse than Melissa in full-on outraged mom mode. Though it’s pretty close. “Just shut up and get me somewhere where I don’t have to worry about people getting possessed,” he says.

“Okay,” Derek says, and jumps off the roof.

* * *

Melissa is not happy.

She shows up with a senior member of the Hastings-Wintun pack and a local ambulance, and proceeds to whip the grumbling, semi-dazed people milling out of the motel into an orderly evacuation. Does a headcount, intimidates the hotel manager into locking up the place for the time being, and then puts the Hastings-Wintun woman in charge while she stalks back to where Stiles and Chris are trying to quietly make sure their group is fully free of the motel’s effects.

“You will go straight back to our hotel,” she says, staring at Torres and Greenberg till Torres’ feather crest pops nervously up again. “You will find your coach, and you will inform him that you are suspended from all team activities, effective immediately, and then you will call your parents and you will tell them you are _grounding_ yourself for at least a week. When we get home, you will tell your parents what happened, _accurately_ , and you will agree to however they decide to adjust your punishment. Do you hear me?”

Torres and Greenberg mumble incoherently and huddle in the back of Chris’ SUV, and then all but flop all over each other as Melissa turns away from them. She pauses slightly, seeing Chris—he’s concentrating way too hard on putting away his taser—and her expression goes a little concerned.

But then she finishes turning and she’s facing Scott, who already has his head lowered and his shoulders pulled up. “Mom?” he says.

Melissa takes a deep, sharp breath, and then just looks at Scott for a few seconds. An extremely tortuous couple seconds, during which Peter comes over, assesses, and promptly excuses himself to go back to coordinating with the local pack. And then she lets out her breath in a long, tired sigh, her eyes closing briefly as worry furrows groove around her mouth and brows.

“You know better, Scott. We’ll talk about—well, this isn’t the end of it, but I don’t have the time now. Just—I’m disappointed, I really am,” she says. She pauses, something else about to come out of her mouth, and then she just shakes her head and looks away. “Stiles, Chris, I think I have to be here for a while. Can you take everybody back, and—Stiles, I’m sorry, but if Peter could stay and help with the—”

“Yeah, yeah, sure, I already told him to deal with whatever interpack stuff we need to do,” Stiles says. “Did you talk to Dad already?”

“I had a quick call with him, and he’s not coming over but he’s sending one of the rangers to meet me here.” Melissa grimaces. “It’s out of our jurisdiction, but when he called the closest FBI office, they asked if we could cover for now. They’re understaffed for curse-breakers and they can’t get somebody out till morning.”

Stiles makes a face too. “Wow, that sucks. Do you want us to bring you anything?”

“No, I should be able to go once the ranger gets here,” Melissa says. She starts to move back towards the crowd, then pauses and looks at Scott before settling her exhausted gaze on Stiles. “Just try to keep it quiet for the rest of tonight, all right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure,” Stiles says. As she walks off, he turns around and takes in everybody, and then he starts making shooing noises towards the car. “Well, you heard her. Come on, get in, let’s…” he turns to Derek “…you still have Peter’s car keys?”

Derek raises them. “Also, his threat to gut me and use my head as a hood ornament if I ever jack it again, even though I told him you needed me to.”

“Because he’s smart enough to guess that that is a total misleading gloss on events and you know it, smartass,” Stiles snorts. He hits Derek on the back—well, he’s aiming for that, but somehow Derek manages to twist himself so that Stiles’ fingers bounce off his unreasonably well-padded ass instead. Stiles rolls his eyes, but he has to give Derek props for the deviousness.

He hooks his hand over Derek’s shoulder, and Derek leans into it with just a hint of smirk on his face, and for a second it’s almost a fun, crazy night out. And then…Stiles sees Scott’s downcast face, and there’s kicking a puppy and then there’s watching the puppy slowly give up the hope to ever venture out into the world again.

Stiles sighs and takes his hand off Derek, and moves over to Scott’s elbow. “So, I think Derek can take me and Scott, at least, and…”

“You two are coming with me. You heard Mrs. McCall, but I think I’m going to make sure we have that talk with Coach Finstock first thing when we get there,” Chris says, eyeing Torres and Greenberg like he’s measuring them up for their coffins. 

He doesn’t even have a weapon in his hand, but Torres’ feather crest flattens so quickly that a feather comes floating out of it; Greenberg sneezes at the feather and then squirms like the only thing keeping him from pissing himself is absolute terror of Chris. Who totally almost-smirks just like a Hale, for that second before he looks up and sees Allison.

Chris hesitates, clearly uncertain, and then he blinks in surprise when Allison walks over to him and pulls open the SUV’s back passenger door. “I’ll catch a ride too. I’m beat, Dad. Can’t wait to get back and shower.”

“I’d better come and make sure these idiots don’t make things worse,” Jackson says, surprisingly enough. He steps up between Torres and Greenberg and claps faux-friendly hands to their shoulders, and then shoves them further into the SUV. “Because I don’t even want to hear about your mom, Greenberg. I swear to God, if she calls up Finstock and weasels you out again, I will…”

On the other hand, Lydia slides towards Stiles and Scott while Jackson’s filling out the minute details of his threats. Stiles raises his brow at her, then cocks his head at Jackson, and Lydia sniffs and stalks past them, tossing her hair back as if they’re the ones keeping her waiting.

Derek looks inquiringly at Stiles, who shrugs and tugs Scott into the car. Lydia’s claimed shotgun and Derek looks about to order her out when Stiles gets in, gives the side of his neck a quick peck—and gets back an equally quick purr—and then presses himself and Scott into the backseat.

“We’re not fighting,” Lydia says as Derek starts up the car. “It’s just that I don’t feel like sitting through a Finstock lecture on top of everything else tonight. After all, it’s not as if _I’ve_ earned one.”

“Well, fair enough,” Stiles says.

Scott’s silent. He’s not even trying to type out fifty-text-long apologies, which is his usual move when Allison’s in one of her rare upset moods with him. And then Derek drives out onto the road, circling around the evacuated motel guests and Scott suddenly straightens up.

Stiles looks past him and sees Peter, who is admittedly way hotter than any man who’s clearly telling an angry guest they can get their luggage in the morning should be, but who can’t be what Scott is looking at. And then Peter moves a little and Melissa comes into view a few yards behind him, going over a clipboard with an EMT.

Peter looks over and glares at Derek, and then his eyes move to the backseat. He catches on, looks over his shoulder at Melissa, and then gestures at Stiles, who shakes his head and then waves for Peter to stay put. Then Stiles puts his arm around Scott’s shoulders and carefully pulls him back, so when he slumps, he doesn’t thump his head into the window glass.

“Is curse what we’re going with?” Lydia says suddenly.

“Why are you so interested?” Stiles says, confused and also a little annoyed. He’s still coming down from feeling about a zillion things about the stunt Scott pulled, most of them variations on fear and anger, and to be honest, he’s not really in the mood for witty repartee. Or dealing with anybody else’s quirks. “It’s not an experimental lab, Lydia, they’re not going to let us field-test prototypes in there while they figure out why this place keeps killing people.”

“I wasn’t saying that,” Lydia says sharply. She’s palpably sulking as they cruise through town at a nice, sedate pace (Derek might act like he doesn’t care, but Peter’s threats always have a solid promise under all that florid ornamentation). “Just…even if they didn’t do a thorough job before, they would have at least checked for it, wouldn’t they?”

“I don’t know, I’d need to see the reports. Anyway, they’re definitely going to check for it now, and keep checking till they figure out what it is,” Stiles says. He stares at the part of her face that he can see and thinks he recognizes that tilt to her chin, and frowns a little. “You’re…you know, I thought you were all, I don’t want to be a typical banshee, I want to expand the definition of what people think they can do. So don’t tell me you’re suddenly volunteering to—”

“I’m not telling you that because I am in no way, shape, or form volunteering for something where they have perfectly good paid professionals to deal with it,” Lydia snaps.

Stiles frowns some more. “Then what’s with the ride-along? You know better than Jackson that pack doesn’t have to do everything together.”

“No, but pack would be truly stupid to not use its members’ special abilities, and till they find out what’s at the bottom of it, I’m the nearest early-warning system.” Lydia looks into the backseat, and her face is a lot more uncertain than her strident tone makes out. “And yes, I know what your link with the tree does, but you need to sleep eventually, Stiles.”

“Says you and anyone else who hasn’t seen me fully caffeinated,” Stiles scoffs.

Derek clears his throat. “I can break the vending machines and the coffeemakers if that’s what you’re asking, alpha.”

“Asshole,” Stiles says, and then he turns back to Lydia. He’s still a little confused by her back-and-forth interest in the whole situation, but he’s starting to recognize the way she’s talking about it, as if she somehow owes somebody something. “You know…you know that just because I’m not asking you to do that, doesn’t mean I think you can’t, or won’t. And that if shit goes down with the motel, it’s because you weren’t being full-on banshee. The tree misses stuff all the time because it’s a _plant_ and doesn’t understand our human priorities, and that’s…that’s just life.”

“Life and your epic rants about interspecies sensory translation issues,” Lydia says skeptically, but a little of the tension in her face drains away. She tosses her hair back, and then her head tilts as she takes out her phone. “Well, fine, I suppose there’s no point in wasting my beauty sleep if the sacrifice won’t be appreciated.”

“We’re gonna need somebody to make sure Jackson shuts up about how our line-up is totally fucked long enough to get to bed too, anyway,” Stiles says, grinning.

Lydia doesn’t smile, or even look up from her phone, but she gives him this little dismissive flick of her fingers over one shoulder, and he figures she’s okay.

Scott, on the other hand…well, he’s been following the conversation, and when it’s over he gives Stiles an encouraging smile, but it’s small and weak, and definitely just because Scott’s supportive instincts are just as stubborn as his altruism. Stiles suppresses another sigh and checks their progress through the town; he’s not putting his and Scott’s little talk off till morning, no matter how tired he’s starting to feel, but he doesn’t think that in front of Lydia and Derek is the time or place for it.

Thankfully, they only have to spend another five minutes or so being awkward, and they also arrive before Chris’ SUV does. Not so thankfully, Finstock is pacing in front of the hotel reception, waiting for them.

“Well, whether you’re asking or not, you’re going to owe me for _this_ ,” Lydia says, squaring her shoulders and then stalking over to intercept him.

Derek takes a few more seconds to make sure the car is all locked up and fine, but then he walks after Lydia. “Chaperone whatever, I get it, and I am not volunteering for one of these trips ever again, no matter where we get to bang afterward,” he says as he passes Stiles.

“Well, in college, we don’t need chaperones,” Stiles points out.

As he’s backing himself and Scott around the corner. Finstock’s spotted them, but Derek’s more than asshole enough to block the way, even if Lydia wasn’t already talking Finstock’s ear off. Then there are the usual curious classmates, especially when they realize that Scott’s back.

“Hey, you all right?” Isaac asks, skittering down the steps towards them. “You look like hell, Scott.”

He’s literally the only one who goes with that instead of some variation on, what did Greenberg do now and is he dead, and for that Stiles makes himself be polite. “It’s a long story, Scott and I gotta caucus, can you just get the details from Allison or Derek and also, get everybody to back off before somebody dies here?”

Isaac’s brows go up, and then he looks twice at Scott, who hasn’t even mustered up the energy to look disapproving about the death threat. “Sure,” he says slowly. “I…guess see you in the morning.”

“Yeah,” Scott says half-heartedly. He lets Stiles hustle them into Stiles’ room, and then he slumps down onto the nearest bed, looking at his feet. “You’re mad at me.”

Stiles locks the door and throws up the temporary privacy wards, and then…and then he looks at his friend, and he sighs and he plops his ass on the dresser across from Scott. “Your mom is mad at you. Allison’s mad at you. Me, I’m…I am highly irritated. Also, confused. What the hell, Scott, what happened to you and me being the dynamic duo? Or at least, I don’t know, co-formulating the game plan…”

“I wasn’t trying to say we shouldn’t get Derek and Peter involved. You know that, right?” Scott says, suddenly looking up. He’s still in classic beaten-canine mode, shoulders down, limbs pulled in, but at least there’s a spark of earnestness in his eyes. “I know you gotta take care of your pack. That’s why I was saying I’d just go ahead first.”

“And that’s why I was saying just wait two seconds so we can round up back-up—Scott, seriously, we have enough people for back-up now! I mean, that never happens, that’s why we always have to—oh, God, please tell me you weren’t trying to pull a me,” Stiles says. He squeezes the edge of the dresser to keep from jumping off and shaking Scott’s shoulders. “You can’t do that, Scott. You’re the voice of reason, that’s our secret sauce, you can’t just go switching up the recipe like that.”

Scott frowns for a few seconds, and then shakes his head slowly. “Uh, no, I wasn’t…if I were going to pull a Stiles, I would’ve gone in there trying to take down the whole curse, or whatever it was. All I was trying to do was make sure people didn’t get hurt.”

“I hear you,” Stiles says after a moment. “I do. I really do. And yet I also hear the sound of hair splitting.”

“Stiles,” Scott starts, just the mildest bit exasperated (which makes him sound eerily like Melissa for a second, and sure he’s her kid and genetics but it’s still weird). Then he ducks his head and starts tugging at his hair. “Okay. So maybe…maybe there was a little Stiles going on. But I really, really wasn’t thinking about doing anything but keeping people from dying. I _know_ I’m not as good with magic and that stuff. I wasn’t trying to be some huge hero.”

And he sighs extra-deep with that, as if it’d be stupid for him to even think of himself as a hero, and Stiles officially gives up on even lip-service to the cold-shoulder treatment and gets off the dresser. He sits down on the bed next to Scott, claps his hand on Scott’s shoulder, and then waits for Scott to stop looking surprised about it.

“I know, bro. And you know how I know this? Because it’s been…” Stiles checks his phone “…almost two hours since everything went down and you _still_ haven’t pointed out that I pull the one-man army shit constantly and I’m being a total hypocrite here.”

“Well, because you’re not,” Scott says. He’s confused to the point that he actually, bless his over-empathetic soul, tries to give Stiles a reassuring pat on the back. “Yeah, you drag us off a lot when I wish we’d just wait for your dad, but you actually know what you’re doing.”

“I…love you so much, Scott, so much. And I love your faith and loyalty, and most of all, your trust. I love it so much that I am this close to just letting that go, because perfect trust is like a rainbow and only assholes would want to drive a plane through a rainbow.” Stiles takes a deep breath, grips Scott’s shoulder a little tighter (Scott’s brow furrows but he actually tilts so that Stiles doesn’t have as far to reach), and then pulls their heads together. “But here’s the thing—have you ever heard of the saying, fake it till you make it?”

Scott snorts. “Stiles, I know you don’t _know_ know. I know you. But that’s—what I mean. I know you, and you might not know exactly what to do, but you know—you always just know what to do to figure out what to do, and…and it works out. Even if it doesn’t sound like it when I say it out loud, but—”

“Nope, I know what you’re saying. And…and thanks, you know. For just going with it,” Stiles says.

“Well, you always want to help people,” Scott says simply. “If we’re going to talk about me acting like you, why wouldn’t I want to do that, too?”

Hard to argue with that. Not that Stiles doesn’t try anyway, because he’s losing the thread here but he can’t just let it drop. Sure, they’re okay now, but…but he had to watch his best friend run by himself into something that could’ve killed Scott before Stiles even got there. And as they sit together in the hotel room, he can’t help thinking about that over and over again.

It’s not that he suddenly thinks Scott is incompetent, or anything like that. He knows Scott can handle himself. He’s seen Scott fight, and deal with magic, and even occasionally solve stuff with quick thinking. If he didn’t take that all seriously, he wouldn’t trust Scott with his back and he does. Stiles doesn’t even have to think about it. But…but this time is just different, and Stiles can’t quite put his finger on why yet.

“We’ve gotten lucky before,” Stiles says, while he’s still trying to figure it out. “I mean, yeah, I _am_ full of awesome, but even I’ll admit that we pulled off some stuff we never should have been able to. Though do not ever tell my dad that, he’d never let me hear the end of it.”

“I won’t,” Scott promises. Then he winces and drops his head again. “Man, Mom was…she’s really going to lay it down when she gets back.”

“Yeah, she looked…I don’t think she’s even looked at me like that for a while.” Stiles hears just the faintest worried whine in Scott’s exhale and he can’t help but hug the guy. “So look, you deserve some of that, but let me know if you want me to come in.”

Scott glances at him. “You’re not gonna lie and say it’s part your fault, just so she’s less mad at me.”

“I think she’d buy it,” Stiles says. “With my record? Though she and Allison seem very buddy-buddy, so we’d have to get Allison to—”

“Stiles, you’re _not_ doing that,” Scott says sharply, straightening up. He turns and looks Stiles in the eye, shoulders straight and head up. Most of the time his posture’s…best characterized as omega with politely dominant overtones, but right there he’s verging on alpha. “And don’t even start with, I’ve done it for you, because I didn’t do that so you’d owe me. This is on me, and I deserve whatever Mom dishes out.”

“Okay, okay. Just, you know, offering, but no means no, I got it,” Stiles says. Then he settles back as Scott relaxes. “So just—why didn’t you tell her, anyway? So she was busy with a patient, so she’s always busy with somebody, but you always want to at least call her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you not do that. We could be in the Everglades with a literal tinfoil satellite to beam out a signal, and…”

Scott makes a face. “That was the worst vacation ever,” he mutters. Then he makes another, more pensive face, absently scratching at the side of his neck. “I always called her because—not just so she could help get us back-up. It’s also because after my dad left, she…just had me. So I…I wanted to make sure she always knew I wasn’t going just to go, and that she’d know why I had to.”

He’s quiet for a few minutes after that, though from the look on his face, he’s still mulling things over. Just as well, since Stiles…honestly never thought about things that way, and now that Scott’s pointed it out, he’s feeling a lot of retroactive guilt over all the times he’s blackmailed and buffaloed Scott into coming along with him. Not that he’s ever knowingly tossed them into a suicide mission (he’s impulsive, not self-destructive), but the thing with Stiles and his dad is, his dad comes from a military background to begin with. So Stiles has always been taught, and always assumed, that you do your damnedest to get back and your buddies do your damnedest to go back for you. You don’t have to remind each other not to abandon each other.

Then again, Stiles thinks, remembering the whole campus visit kidnapping incident a couple weeks ago, maybe his dad’s just been stiff-upper-lipping that too. No wonder his dad and Chris have hooked up.

“I guess maybe this time I was thinking that’s not a problem,” Scott suddenly goes on. “You guys live here now, not across the country, and she’s got your dad and Chris, and Allison really likes her too. If something happened to me, Allison would check on Mom, I know that. And you would too.”

“I’d like to say I don’t see the logic on that, but I can’t, because I do,” Stiles says. He pauses, then nudges Scott in the ribs. “That said, it’s pretty terrible logic, Scott.”

Scott grimaces. “Well, I’m not known to be good at that either.”

“Okay, please just stop with the self-hating stuff.” Stiles pauses, assesses the severity with which Scott’s head is angled in a depressed tilt, and then reluctantly pulls out his trump card. “You’re gonna remind me of Derek at this rate.”

Bingo. Instant five-degree improvement. Scott rubs at his hair again, then absently pops his claw and starts scraping off a frayed sheath. “I really just wanted to help.”

“I know, but…I just think looking at it like you don’t have to worry about your mom is—okay, that’s not a bad thing, but we’re not fully optimizing here. I mean, again, back-up. Extra bodies, extra skill sets…Scott, we were doing good with helping before, but just think about what we can do now,” Stiles says.

“I know, and you’re right, and next time I’ll remember that, I promise,” Scott says. “I’m sorry I blew you off earlier. I don’t…I don’t know why, it’s just, you kept saying you needed to get Derek or Peter, and I kept thinking, you have to take care of your pack, I can’t drag you away from that.”

“Well, because I did, but it’s—it’s just not an either-or thing, you know. It’s not like you stopped being my friend because I got a pack,” Stiles says. He gives Scott a kick in the ankle—which is maybe a little hard, but he is still kind of mad at the guy. “Hey, speaking of, you’re not—it’s not—”

Scott jerks around and looks at Stiles, and then shakes his head hard, his eyes wide. “What? No, of course not, you know you’re not—Mom and me being packless, that’s never been about me and you, that’s just all werewolf politics stuff. You’re still my best friend, and it doesn’t matter if you’re alpha of a pack or not.”

“Okay, good. I—just checking,” Stiles says hurriedly. Because he’s mad at Scott, not sadistic, and there’s a difference between jabbing somebody in the ankle when they deserve it and suckerpunching them when they’re not looking. “Sorry. I…yeah, well, I’m still getting the hang of the whole alpha thing, and how to actually lead a pack, and all that. So I kind of get where you’re coming from on not being used to working with more people, but…”

“We gotta learn,” Scott agrees. He’s calmed down and no longer looks like he might whip his own head off, and then he even manages a small, lopsided smile. “You know, I was actually thinking about that. And it’s not that I’m too proud to listen to you now that you’re an alpha, Stiles, but maybe there’s—maybe it’s a little wolf stuff. It’s just—you have your own pack, and you do have responsibilities with that now, and I’d be a bad friend if I just leaned on you all the time. And—and we’re all graduating soon and I was thinking, Allison and I—maybe are gonna be starting our own pack, and we’ve gotta be able to take care of it ourselves, and I don’t know, I keep thinking, am I gonna know what to do?”

“Um, so…wow, okay, that’s a lot right in there. You definitely know how to pull a left out of nowhere, Scotty,” Stiles says. Well, babbles, honestly, but he thinks he’s doing pretty good just still being capable of speech.

Then again, this is Scott, who’s been following his lead since Stiles was old enough to figure out how to toddle out of the house. And who worries about him, and backs him up, and who might have just had a dumbass moment, but of course it turns out it’s not that simple. If it were, Scott wouldn’t be Scott.

“I know running off without thinking isn’t really how I should go around being an alpha,” Scott adds, just a touch wryly.

“Yeah, well, thankfully, it’s Allison you’ve hooked up with and I think she can alpha when you can’t,” Stiles mutters under his breath. He runs his hand over the top of his head, then looks at Scott. “So unless there’s something you really, really want to run by me, so we can brainstorm _really_ fast about how to handle your mom and Chris, I think you got a while before this comes up for real, you know.”

Scott blinks hard, perpetual innocent that he is, then starts up the frantic head-shaking again.

“Good, so we have practice time. Because I don’t know if you noticed or anything, but I’m kind of learning on the job too and I fuck up plenty,” Stiles says, dropping his arm around Scott’s shoulders. He pulls in the guy so that the head-shaking stops, then gives Scott a squeeze. And then, just as Scott is starting to smile at him, he lightly smacks the back of the guy’s head. “Just don’t freak me out like that again, okay?”

“Okay,” Scott says simply.

Stiles breathes out, a wave of relief rippling through muscles he hadn’t even realized had tensed up. He leans into Scott, who lets him, and for a few minutes they just sit there and chill. Alive and well, and more or less back to status quo.

“Well, good, glad we got that put to bed,” Stiles eventually says. “Because now we have to work on your approach with Allison and your mom, and honestly, Chris and probably my dad too. And believe me, that’s going to—”

There’s a knock on the door, just as Scott is cringing. “It’s me, open up, people are staring,” Jackson calls.

“Isn’t that your preferred environment?” Stiles says, though he gets up and he opens the door. “If we lost another teammate to the Motel of a Thousand Deaths, I’m—”

“No, we didn’t,” Jackson says, rolling his eyes. He’s a little sharp with something besides irritation, and also trying to peer around Stiles. When Scott moves into view, Jackson sags a little in relief, then settles into his usual arrogantly pissy expression. “Just so you know, Finstock’s going around doing a last room check, so McCall here better get back to his room.”

“I’m already suspended, aren’t I?” Scott sighs. Though nice guy that he is, he’s checking around to see if he left anything, and then he starts nudging his way past Stiles.

Jackson looks at Scott as if Scott has the intelligence of a microbe on the bottom of his shoe. “At this point the line-up’s completely crocked anyway, so thinking about that is a little late,” he says. “But if you want to have any chance of making the next match, which, by the way, is the _last_ one the scouts are going to hit, you might want to stop making Finstock think he’s going to get slaughtered by your mom.”

“And as usual, you put things in perspective,” Stiles says, moving out of Scott’s way. Though then he follows Scott out into the hall, and claps his hand to Jackson’s shoulder before the other man can make his exit. “Whether that’s the right perspective, or even one worthy of reasonable doubt, that’s another question.”

“Stiles, it’s okay, I should go anyway,” Scott says. He gives them a wave and then lopes off towards his room.

Jackson’s got his head ducked, but he’s squirming his shoulder under Stiles’ hand. “So, you want to let that go, so I can make sure the idiot actually stays put?”

“Since when was that your job?” Stiles mutters. “Besides, you’re around the corner.”

“I made Isaac swap with me, so no, I’m not, I’m rooming with Scott now,” Jackson says, and then he rolls his eyes. “Listen, lacrosse aside, nobody needs the pity parade that’ll happen if McCall bites it. And the match is going to be a disaster anyway, so it’s not like matters if any of us get a whole extra hour of sleep now. God knows Lydia’s going to be up with Allison helping her talk to Scott anyway.”

“Again with the unique perspective, but I think I detect a hint of responsibility towards our fellow werewolves, and so fine, you get your shoulder back,” Stiles says, taking his hand off Jackson. He starts to step back into his room, then pauses. “Hey. So Lydia. She’s okay, right? She looked pretty freaked out. That doesn’t happen a lot, does it?”

Jackson grimaces and leans away, and for a second Stiles thinks the asshole might actually walk off on him. But no, Jackson’s actually just checking for eavesdroppers. He edges back towards Stiles, his voice dropping to an annoyed whisper. “No, it doesn’t, and you’re in the hole with her already, do you really want to keep digging? Just a suggestion, alpha.”

“Yeah, yeah, well, Lydia wants to settle up, she knows where to find me,” Stiles says, though he lowers his voice too. “But she’s—”

“She can work it out.” Jackson hesitates, a flicker of real concern going across his face, and then he rubs at the side of his face like he’s trying to grind out all the soft squishy emotions. “I’ve been around a couple times before when she walked into bad places. It doesn’t happen a lot but we know what to do.”

“Okay, fine. Just let me know when Lydia wants to call in those favors.” Stiles puts his hand on the door, then clears his throat. He waits for Jackson to get past the impatient sigh. “And don’t worry about the match.”

Jackson looks at him for a couple seconds, then abruptly turns away. “I’m not even going to ask,” he mutters as he goes down the hall. “In fact, I’m going to forget I even heard you say that, because just knowing you’re thinking about it…no, no, this conversation never happened, Stiles.”

“And a nonexistent good-night to you too,” Stiles says, rolling his eyes.

He pulls his door shut and turns around and then yelps and slaps his hand against the door so all the temporary runes flare. Pointlessly, since the two werewolves standing by the beds are already keyed into them.

“Hey, we’re back,” Derek says. He’s just shutting the balcony door, as you do when you’re a werewolf who seems to have something against using primary entrances under any circumstances.

“Great, way to let me know before my heart—” Stiles starts.

Peter, being savvier, takes his shirt off before he turns around. “Hmm?” he says, giving his already-tousled-from-the-shirt hair an extra scrunching with one hand. “Well, eventful as the evening’s been, I am very grateful to finally get to enjoy this bed.”

And then he sits down and tips back and sprawls across the mattress, all bare-chested and stretching out and shamelessly, shamelessly playing to the basest instincts possible. 

“I am supposed to get up in six hours for pre-match warm-ups,” Stiles says. While letting his eyes roam all over that ridiculous expanse of flat, tight pecs and flexing abdomen, because Peter is a troll but still, it’s only hurting Stiles if he doesn’t take the opportunity to appreciate it. “Also, probably, to talk to my dad and the FBI about the motel, and by the way, we need a whole new game plan for the match now.”

Derek sits down on the edge of the bed to take off his shoes. And his shirt. And, since his belly is randomly itchy, his belt, and why doesn’t he undo the button of his jeans’ fly, too. “So get in bed already,” he says. “You’re not going to get to sleep over there.”

“Like I am if I come over, and you two are so, so lucky that I do my best plotting when I’m multi-tasking and sleep-deprived,” Stiles says, shaking his head. And yeah, crossing the room. Because sleep is a moot point no matter what he does, so there’s no reason he needs to deprive himself of a comfy mattress.

* * *

So it turns out that the match is easy. All Stiles has to do, once he’s realized that the motel has probably been the neighborhood horror legend for generations, is spread a few rumors about how his teammates dramatically survived the night there. And a couple key details, such as hauntings being transferable by touch sometimes, and curses preferring locals, and done, the opposing team is so nervous about getting close to them that even with a third-string defense and no Scott, they win (legally! nothing against psych-outs in the rules!).

The scouts are a little trickier to deal with, but during a break, Peter manages to pass along word that one is a member of a pack who the Hales have political ties with, so of course Stiles comes up to say hi after the match, and invite him to come join the monthly Hale hunt, which just happens to be the day before their last, conveniently at home, game. And where one scout promises to go, the others will follow out of fear of missing a prospect. Which will benefit not just Scott, but Jackson and Isaac too, so nobody can say that Stiles isn’t looking out for the greater pack.

Lydia insists that she’s fine, but she doesn’t turn it down when Stiles pulls some strings and gets them invites to a regional seminar on infrasonic technology in exorcisms. The motel—well, the motel gets shut down, and the FBI opens an investigation into the apparently bribable town clerk who’d allowed it to reopen in the first place. And they don’t share their info, which is kind of annoying seeing as Melissa and the ranger secured the whole scene before the FBI got there. But, as Stiles’ dad points out every time he finds Stiles hacking into the FBI network for an update, at least the right federal agency is owning their duties for once.

Which leaves Scott. Who is grounded, grounded, grounded, and who _Allison_ is still holding a grudge against (Chris actually calmed down fast, though that might have been because he was deferring to Melissa on the angry-parent front). They aren’t anywhere near broken up, but Allison is insisting on being respectful of Melissa’s punishment, so she’s sneaking in to see Scott about fifty percent less than normal.

“It’s not that I don’t understand it, or support it, but she’s just holding out a lot longer than I would’ve thought,” Stiles says, playing with Peter’s curls.

“I suppose they’re serious, in that case.” Peter rubs his head into Stiles’ fingers, breath puffing up to warm Stiles’ palm, and then puts it back on Stiles’ thigh. Eventually. After a leisurely detour to lap at the still-sticky come running down the side of Stiles’ cock, and then a detour from the detour when Stiles inhales and tightens his grip and semi-accidentally pushes Peter mouth-first onto him. “Not that I’m _that_ familiar with Argent courting style, but they do seem to overreact when they realize they’ve nearly lost someone.”

Stiles doesn’t immediately respond, because hey, blowjob, nice wet suction on his cock head. But they’ve already gone a couple rounds and that’s going to take the edge off, even for a healthy teenage male, and he slowly drags Peter off enough for his vocal cords to work again. “Yeah, not like that’s like anyone else we know.”

“I’m not sure whether that’s supposed to be a dig at me or one at yourself, alpha,” Peter says after a second. He’s studying Stiles a little more seriously than he should be, despite the drawling tone. Those light eyes of his get strangely transparent when he’s concerned, like all that sarcasm and gleeful mischief clears out, particles settling to the bottom of the sample jar so each one can be counted, looking way smaller than when they’re obscuring everything. “And I thought that this time turned out rather well, for once. Talia always loves it when other packs end up owing us favors.”

“Well, I’m on a roll there, between this and the last inter-pack conference,” Stiles says. He twirls his fingers in Peter’s hair again, then lets himself puddle back into the bed as Peter kisses and nips softly at his fingertips. “Nah, no, it did turn out okay. It’s just…it feels weird. Being on my dad’s side. Because—I kind of realized—that’s literally what happened, right? Scott pulled a me, so I pulled a Dad.”

Peter hums thoughtfully, tilting his head as Stiles runs his fingers down the side of the man’s face, then catches them up under Peter’s jaw. That spot’s pretty much kryptonite to every werewolf Stiles has ever met and Peter’s no exception, but even purring and lolling over to give Stiles a better angle, he manages to work the neurons. “Is that not what you want?”

“No, it’s—I mean, I always figured I’d follow in Dad’s footsteps, more or less. He’s awesome at what he does, and if I’m half as good when I get out of school, I think I can call it a day,” Stiles says. He stops scratching, blinks when he hears a disgruntled whine, and then laughs and resumes petting Peter. “I just…did not think I’d be doing it any time soon. Just not what I’m known for, you know. You don’t come to Stiles town for reasoned, methodical approaches to problems.”

“You still hauled everybody across town and made me steal Peter’s car,” Derek says, coming back into the room. He pauses, sniffs, and then makes a face as he does the werewolf math and figures out how much sex he missed because he came home filthy from patrol and Stiles does not do indoor mudsex. “Don’t know how reasoned that was.”

“Not very, considering I know Stiles didn’t make you do _anything_ involving my car that night,” Peter sniffs. And deliberately sprawls further as Derek comes up to the bed, taking up all the available room.

Derek glowers at him. Then snorts, and just starts climbing on top of Peter. When Peter growls and tries to roll him off, Derek catches Stiles’ eye and then twists down to start licking the sweat off Peter’s nape. Which is a presumptuous asshole move, and Stiles loves it, and anyway they do owe Derek a round, so Stiles shifts more of his fingers into Peter’s hair and helps hold Peter down till he stops growling and starts groaning, arching his ass up against the jeans that, for some bizarre reason, Derek decided to put on before leaving the bathroom.

Right about then Derek comes to the same conclusion, and slides semi-off Peter so that he can start stripping. “Besides, everybody thinks I’m an angry swimwear model and Peter’s a werewolf version of the Evil Queen from the fairytales. So?”

“So…I thought we talked to you about tangling with Cora when she’s got a major exam coming up,” Stiles says, eyeing him.

“Though I’ll admit that’s an improvement over being the Wicked Witch of the Wolves,” Peter says. He turns over, pausing as his hair tickles up against Stiles’ cock and Stiles squirms, and then laps a drop of sweat off Derek’s jaw before abruptly grabbing Derek’s waist and pulling them both up to cradle their heads on Stiles’ thigh, making out with Derek the whole time. “Melt in water, indeed. And flying monkeys, completely the tacky end of Victoriana.”

“You’d like getting minions,” Derek half-accuses, half challenges, like Peter’s tongue isn’t already in his mouth.

Peter shrugs, sending them another couple inches onto Stiles. His shoulder prods into Stiles’ thigh and Stiles pushes at it, so Peter rolls Derek over and hauls up one of Derek’s now-bare legs. That frees up Stiles to pull himself up against the headboard and watch Peter grope in the sheets with increasing frustration for the lube.

“Well, so, okay, the general population knows nothing, and we’re all complicated beings, and it’s not like I’m disturbed or anything, it was just…surprising,” Stiles says. He toes up the lube from the sheets, well away from Peter’s hand, and then slides it till he can grab it with his hand. “But I guess even Scott can’t be the responsible one all the time, and pull people back when they’re gonna screw up, and pick up after them, and—”

Derek pries his mouth off Peter long enough to turn his head and see the lube. “So if we fuck up, will you get over here and fuck somebody already?”

“Then again, no wonder I’m turning into Dad if you’re gonna mess up _that_ ,” Stiles says, pushing off the headboard.

He’s barely got off it when one of his betas snakes out a hand and yanks him over. And that’s not exactly proper role playing either, but…whatever, they can’t hit every kink _every_ single time. That’s the whole point of practice, anyway. Gotta leave something to learn for the future.

**Author's Note:**

> I've said this in a couple other places, but as much as I see Scott being a flawed character, his flaws are actually pretty realistic; many people tend to see do-gooding as a very black-and-white concept when they're young, and have to grow into learning that altruism isn't as simple as telling everybody what the right thing to do is. What bothers me about the show is that it doesn't treat this aspect of Scott as a character flaw at all, so Scott never gets those lessons in complexity, whereas, say, Stiles does get punished when his drive to fix things results in unintended negative consequences (and so Stiles gets a learning arc about how to do it better the next time).
> 
> In a world where the supernatural exists, I imagine stuff like curses and hauntings end up being looked at like shoddy construction. Something like a gas leak or lead leaching into your pipes is still horrifying, and can be an immediate emergency, but you have established protocols for how to deal with it and when those fail, it's more of an outrage rather than a fear situation.
> 
> Also, I've always thought it was incredibly unrealistic that Finstock would be able to take enough teenagers to fill a bus with just him and the bus driver as the only adults. Seriously, there'd be other chaperones along. 
> 
> Even in worlds where supernatural creatures are known and accepted, you probably would have issues where they're still pigeonholed, and not just of the they're dangerous and should all be locked up variety. I was a little disappointed to see canon!Lydia's math- and science skills only get used as plot points, so in this world, I'm expanding a bit on that and looking at how Lydia might have certain things come easily to her, but her real interests actually lie elsewhere, and how she might have to fight to be able to pursue what she wants, instead of just doing what she's good at.


End file.
